Dear groupmates,
Hello from Toronto! I am Anna with an educational background – was once a researcher, a professor, and an administrator in a big and popular East Ukrainian university with more than 20 thousand students. My beloved HEI was unfortunately lost long time ago, in 2014, and this is why I am in Canada. I am still looking for the ways to return to higher education properly in the Great White North.
MET program has taught me a lot, and I expect this course to be beneficial to me as well. I am currently interested in Duolingo as a way of learning a foreign language individually.
I am amazed at how available digital resources – videos from Youtube and Tiktok, for example, – can make the foreign-language studies easier and faster for students of ALL AGES, gender, origin, and occupation.
My most striking example is the guy in his late 50s, originally from Israel, who worked as a truckdriver in Ontario and asked me for the ways of improving his English to pass his visa interview at an American-Canadian cross border. I made a big list of short and diverse Youtube videos for him, but since his English vocabulary was very limited, I didn’t keep my hopes high. Well, this talented gentleman proved me wrong, going from zero to hero in a matter of weeks. I wouldn’t have believed the incredible result of his efforts had it not happened in front of me. My educational paradigm has shifted again.
Now I think that a human can study anything anywhere anytime with the help of modern technology. My second course this semester is in ableism, equity and technology for the apparent reason of fighting my teaching biases and widening the horizons.
Thank you for reading and see you soon for this wonderful educational journey together/ensemble!
Hi Anna,
It’s very nice to meet you and wonderful to read your introduction. I have also been a language teacher for the past two decades in Japan but it was never my intention and once my passion for technology was intertwined with my language teaching, things got much more fun! I have studied quite a number of foreign languages and the ones that were the most successful have definitely had a technological component. I studied Japanese for many years without technology and have only gotten so far… I studied Spanish online using regular Skype lessons which was by far the most successful language learning I have accomplished and have learned quite a lot of Urdu over the past few years simple due to listening to my husbands (copious!) phone conversations with his family in Pakistan. I have used Duolingo for both French and Spanish and found it to be quite fun and engaging, I do agree that it is not enough to become fluent. After I complete the MET course, I plan to dive back into Japanese again and will be looking for some kind of online experience again as I did with Spanish. I think the human component is quite an important element which is why Duolingo will be a good tool but not the entire package for me as a language leaner.
Looking forward to getting to know you more throughout the course Anna!
Thank you very much, Louisa! Your close acquaintance with so many languages is really something unique. I look forward to discussing Duolingo with you in detail during my group project of Week 8. And by the way, I am going to combine Duolingo with online tutoring to summarize everything for myself. Lovely meeting you and see you soon! Anna
Anna, love your post! I am a Duolingo user since my daughters are in French Immersion class, but I am an Anglophone. I took some French in school, but Duolingo has helped me to improve a ton while building my vocabulary. I hadn’t even thought about YouTube!
Thank you, Douglas! As an experienced Duolingo user, I hope you will contribute to a Duolingo discussion of Week 8. See you soon! Anna
Your personal anecdote adds depth to your post and I love how you illuminate the limitless possibilities of mobile learning. Learning everywhere and anywhere is the key to the evolution of our education system. I’m sitting in a local ski lodge, working on this course, while my family skis. We will soak in a local Hot Springs later this afternoon. At the beginning of my teaching career, this type of flexibility and freedom was not possible. I am thankful to be a learner in such exciting times!
Exactly! My sentiment too! And do you think how dramatically life will change in a hundred years?! I desperately need a time machine!!!!
Hi Anna, your optimism is appreciated! Wow, what an inspirational story. I tried to learn Danish (when I was living in Denmark), after 8 months I could speak a few words. I wonder if my results would be different if the mobile apps like Duolingo and YouTube as you mentioned had been around.
Dear Meagan, Thank you very much for your comment! Can I ask you something? What was your attitude toward Danish back in the day? Was it a necessity, or did you like how it sounded, or maybe you had lovely neighbours you wanted to chat with? I do think motivation and emotions are important, but so is free time to devote to studies. 15 minutes a day will not bring a desirable result no matter what Duolingo keeps telling me every day, lol. But five hours a day on my smartphone definitely put me ahead of other Duolingo learners in the world. And I also noticed that a lot of people have brilliant audio memory. I even started thinking than men actually have better hearing than women (two centres in the brain instead of one, after all) because it seems much easier for them to memorize what they hear. Miraculously, this audio abilities do not depend on age of a learner, and it is very-very promising for all the immigrants
Hi Anna, Very true – my learning Danish was not a necessity, it would have been helpful, and made communication a lot easier, however the reality was many of my peers spoke English quite well. My attitude was “I’ll try” and see what happens, I knew my time was likely limited to one year. I could not agree more that motivation and emotions will fuel language learning success. Interesting note regarding mens hearing! Although my husbands hearing doesn’t seem that great ; )